Definitions for "Oral Torah"
Keywords:  rabbinic, torah, sinai, moses, mishnah
( torah she-be-al peh) in contrast to the Written Torah ( torah she-bichtav), the instruction God gave to Israel at Sinai contained in the five books of Moses. The Oral Torah consists of forty-two verbal commandments given to Moses at Sinai, and the precepts and interpretations implied in the Written Torah. It also came to include the legal decisions of rabbinical courts and the oral traditions received from earlier generations of Torah scholars.
Name applied to the oral traditions of the Pharisees and then the rabbis. The traditions were collected and written down in rabbinic literature, and were thought to have been given to Moses on Sinai with the written Torah, and then passed down through the generations orally.
The tradition that in addition to the written Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible, there was an oral tradition given to Moses, written down and compiled much later.